


We're All Soldiers Now

by gethbecomesher



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, June/October romance, Making Out, steamy fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 20:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15956639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gethbecomesher/pseuds/gethbecomesher
Summary: Pharah is having trouble staving off self-doubt and frustration after having her ass handed to her by Soldier 76 in a training session. Jack wants to be sure that Fareeha is properly equipped for what's coming.Fareeha must reconcile the rough exterior of Soldier 76 with her memories of Strike Commander Jack Morrison, while Jack needs to realize that Fareeha is a grown woman who can take care of herself.





	We're All Soldiers Now

Fareeha unlatched her armor piece by piece, letting each plate fall to the ground with a dull metallic clang. She groaned, testing the range of movement in her shoulders. The right was still sore. She checked the mirror and sure enough, there was a Helix missile-sized green and purple welt spreading across her shoulder blade. She remembered the hit, of course. It knocked her out of the sky.

She lifted the edge of her tank top to view the angry, spattered contusion purpling just above her hip bone. She touched it gingerly, applying a bruise balm and waiting for the pain to dull. It did, slightly, but the color was still there; an ugly reminder. Her armor was state of the art, but even it had weak points.

She wiped down each part of her armor before storing it in her locker for the next day’s training. “Keeping your equipment in good shape is half the battle”, she could hear her mother’s words in her head, as she did each time she performed her regular maintenance on her gear. It was a ritual, a time for her to clear her mind and process her thoughts.

What was it that she was feeling? Battered, sore, and tired made the top of the list, but there was an uneasiness lurking in the back of her mind. Her cheeks flushed; there was anger there, and shame. The afternoon’s training was brutal. It seemed like there was just no getting the upper hand in the fight, regardless of her angle of attack or strategy. Whatever she tried, she was countered faster and harder. She had earned her place here, she knew it in her logical brain. Then why did she feel like she still had something to prove? And to whom? Her stomach grumbled. Maybe she’d feel better after a snack.

The locker room had cleared out relatively quickly. She wasn’t particularly craving company, but the quick exit of all the other women in the reunited Overwatch program made her wonder if she wasn’t missing out on some extracurricular activities. She shrugged. If everyone was gone, she would have the place to herself.

She made a beeline to the refrigerator in the communal kitchen. She pushed aside everyone’s labeled meals, resisting the temptation to “borrow” one of Zarya’s protein shakes. They were delicious, and if Zarya were there she would have asked her for one and was relatively sure that her request would be granted, but Zarya wasn’t there. She settled for some sliced turkey that she rolled around pieces of cheese and sliced cucumber. She piled some on a plate, filled a glass with water, and turned to find a seat, excited about tucking into her meal. She paused for a moment when she realized she wasn’t alone.

Jack Morrison sat at a table in the far corner of the room, his mask at his side, and a glass of whiskey in his hand. She gritted her teeth. She didn’t want to just leave or pretend she didn’t see him, but she didn’t savor the prospect of trying to pull a conversation out of him either. He always made it so difficult to connect like a regular human, and she had tried. Repeatedly. Besides, she was relatively sure that the worst of the injuries she sustained in the day’s training were at his hand. She didn’t want to talk about that either. He looked up and nodded at her. Shit, now she had to say something. She took her plate and glass and joined him at his table.

“Hey,” she said. He nodded again, and took a sip from his glass. His jacket, emblazoned with his “76” call sign on the back, lay over the empty chair to his left, his folded gloves poking out of one of the pockets. His old faded white t-shirt bore a couple faint stains that had never fully washed out. His white-grey hair was crushed and matted with now-dried sweat from where it lay under his mask. He took another drink and refilled his glass. He looked so - normal, like he was just some guy as opposed to an internationally famous hero. No, not hero. He didn’t like that word anymore.

“Rough day?” asked Fareeha. He reached behind him for another glass, filled it with whiskey and passed it to her. Fareeha raised an eyebrow and looked at him.

“Not as rough as yours,” he said. She felt her cheeks get hot and she hoped her face wasn’t as red as she suspected it was. She reached for the glass and drank. She didn’t want to share her insecurities and frustration with her performance with Strike Commander Jack Morrison, and she was afraid she just did.

“You got me good that one time, my shoulder hurts,” she said.

“I got you a few times,” he said. She studied his face. His expression was somehow both grim and irritatingly self-satisfied. She played through the worst of her tags from the day’s training in her mind. She had only seen him once, when she took the hit that knocked her out mid-flight. If he hadn’t been wearing his mask, she wondered if she would have seen him staring her down.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were targeting me,” she said.

“You weren’t watching your flank.”

She stared at him. He didn’t elaborate, but avoided her gaze and continued to work on his drink. She held up a hand, furrowing her brows.

“Wait, you were targeting me?” she asked. Disbelief colored her voice. “Why?”

He gave her a look, which somehow infuriated her more than any verbal answer he could have come up with. Her inner voice translated his smug expression. _Stupid girl, do you really think you can go toe-to-toe with the rest of us? What makes you think you’re Overwatch material? We’re legends, you’re just a brat who wants to play dress up in her mother’s closet._

She was vaguely aware that the expression on her face must have looked like she had just been slapped. She took a breath, willing that voice in her head to shut up. She had earned her place in this team, in Overwatch. Furthermore, she was a soldier - a damn good one. She had worked for that for years. She knew tactics, strategy, and how the plan that they had laid out was supposed to work.

“What happened to escorting the payload, Jack? Did you just figure the rest of your team would do the work while you ran around harassing me? I-, you-, I can’t believe-,” she sputtered. She crossed her arms, ultimately blurting, “So unprofessional!”

“Did you notice that you watched your six after that?”

“Don’t patronize me! I fell three stories!”

“Better here than out in the field,” he said.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“It’s training, what do you expect?”

Fareeha stared at him open mouthed for a moment. Training was one thing, she had been training for one thing or another on this scale since she was legally allowed to enlist in the Egyptian army. Hell, she had been training hard since she was a child in her martial arts lessons. She knew what to expect from training and she knew that Jack knew that perfectly well.

“What I expect is for the former team leader to treat his peers with some goddamned respect and not single them out during training exercises trying to prove -” she stopped, wracking her brain. “What was it, exactly, that you were trying to prove?”

“Like I said, it was just training,” said Jack. He rolled his glass in his hands, still curiously avoiding Fareeha’s gaze.

“Oh? No one else needs training? It’s just me? I guess you missed when D. Va ran her mech into that wall then? Or when McCree set up directly in Amelie’s sights? Or when Gabe ghosted right into Zarya’s graviton surge?” Jack looked up slightly then. She had struck a nerve and she couldn’t resist digging in. “Oh, but you wouldn’t ‘just train’ him now, would you? Because we all know what happens when you two square up, don’t we?”

Fareeha looked pointedly at Jack’s mask and then at his scarred face. It was a low blow, she knew, but she was angry and hurt. The least she could do was return the favor. She felt a sense of satisfaction when his knuckles turned white in their grip on his glass. The muscle in his jaw flexed as his eyes drifted to hers.

“Do you feel better now?” he asked, his tone was dangerous.

“I’m about to,” she said. She stood up, shoved the last piece of turkey into her mouth, and got into a fighting stance. “Come on, old man. Soldier to soldier.”

Jack looked around, presumably for the audience that Fareeha was playing toward. Seeing no one, he moved his chair out and stood slowly.

“I’m not going to go easy on you,” he said. Fareeha barked a laugh.

The pair danced around each other, lunging and feinting, until Jack took the first swing. Fareeha dodged out of his way with a spin, and took advantage of his resulting lack of balance by landing a kick to his ribs.

“I thought you said you weren’t going to go easy on me,” she taunted. Jack grunted and smirked.

Fareeha was still furious, but something in his expression reminded her of the Old Jack, the one who inspired her to want to make the world a better place. She was distracted with the thought when he swept her legs out from under her and she landed on the laminate floor with an undignified plop.

She blinked, then slid out of the way when he came in for the pin. He gripped her arm and she shifted, breaking his grip, and twisting his arm roughly behind his back. Jack cursed loudly, then reached around with his free hand and tapped her. She released him.

“Round one,” she said, her breath heavy.

Fareeha crouched low, hoping to catch Jack off balance again. He lunged and she spun out of the way, but as her back was turned to him, he caught her right in her bruised shoulder with his elbow. She yelped and glared at him, her anger stoked. He shrugged in a kind of mock apology, infuriating her. She ran at him, thinking to overwhelm him, but he dodged her charge. Catching her off balance, he landed a kick to the same spot in her shoulder, knocking her down.

“Anger can be good,” said Jack. He wrapped an arm around her neck in a light sleeper hold; hard enough to let her know he had won the round, but not so hard as to knock her out. She grit her teeth. She didn’t want to tap out.

“You can use it,” he continued, his lips at her ear. “When you let your anger control you, you get into trouble.” She tapped his forearm and he let her go. She stood, rotated her shoulder, and winced.

“Training ended an hour ago,” she huffed. “And I get it, okay? You don’t think I’m ready for this.”

Fareeha got into her stance again and Jack mirrored her. The expression on his face changed from cocky to confused. Her steps were a little heavier than they were moments ago, but she was still faster than Jack. He swung and she dodged, then doubled back to tag him in the temple with the side of her fist. He shook it off.

“What do you mean I don’t think you’re ready? For what?” he asked, between dodging her jabs. She scowled at him.

“For this,” she replied, waving a hand vaguely around the common room. Jack tried to follow her gesture, his brow furrowed. She hadn’t really expected him to think about her words, but she took his distraction as it was presented to her. She swept his leg, bringing him down to the ground with a crash. She had knocked the wind out of him, she knew. She might have felt bad on a different day, using distractions to win a fight, but not today. Turnabout was fair play. She shoved her knee into his back until he yelled and then backed off, but just enough to hold him pinned.

She could feel him tensing his legs. He would try to throw her off. He made his move, trying to get his legs under him, and she took her knee from his back and used the momentum to throw him to his side with her behind him. She wrapped an arm around his throat and grabbed his ankle with her free hand, wrenching his leg up behind him, immobilizing him. Finally, he tapped her arm.

“Victory,” she said, almost wistfully. She released him and he turned to sit on the floor, rubbing his leg. He looked at her after a moment.

“Why would you think I don’t think you’re ready for this?” he said. She rolled her eyes, exasperated.

“Oh please, Jack. You don’t treat me like everyone else. No one else gets the level of notes and corrections on their scenarios that I get from you,” said Fareeha. He was quiet for what seemed like a long time. At last he sighed.

“You remind me of myself,” he said at last. “Of how I used to be, before.” Fareeha looked at him, tilting her head as if that would make her understand more thoroughly.

“Thank you? At least, I think that’s a compliment,” she said.

“That’s not how I meant it,” said Jack. Of course it wasn’t. “I was a lot like you. At the top of my game, in an elite corps,” he scrubbed his hand along the back of his neck.

“That still sounds like a compliment,” said Fareeha. He shot her a sideways glance.

“I refused to see betrayal, until it was too late. I refused to see a lot of things,” he said.

“So you target me in training? Break protocol to harass me?” she asked. She wrapped her arms around her knees. Betrayal was what she felt, and she didn’t sense any particular enlightenment from it.

“I want you to be better than I was,” he said. “If it could happen to me, it could happen to you. And that’s -” his voice trailed off. He was so sincere, and the sad, lost expression on his scarred face made Fareeha feel a pang of compassion and - something else. She shook her head, trying to engage her logical brain.

“Do you think it’s fair to lay the burden of your expectations at my feet? Especially if you’re not going to tell me about any of this?” He chuckled then, unexpectedly. Fareeha simply stared at him.

“You’re right,” he said. “I guess without the explanation I’m just an asshole bullying the new girl.”

“I’m not ‘new’, Jack. We’ve known each other a long time. And I don’t think you’re an asshole - all the time,” she said, turning a corner of her mouth up into a small smile. He nodded, that was fair. She looked at him for a moment. “As long as we’re being sincere, I just want you to know that your good opinion means a lot to me.”

“My, that is sincere,” said Jack. Fareeha playfully swatted at his shoulder and he batted her hand away.

“Don’t be a dick,” she said. “I’m still mad at you.”

The way she said it sounded flirty, and she knew it. She hadn’t specifically intended it to, but now that it was out there, she didn’t care to take it back. As if she could.

Feelings she hadn’t thought about since she was a teenager bubbled to the surface of her mind. The valiant soldier, humanity’s savior, smiling directly at her through the family television screen. Jack Morrison standing victorious with the wind blowing through his thick blonde hair, giving a speech about what it means to be a hero. She had all the posters and the holo-vids stashed in her room, much to her mother’s amusement.

She looked at the Jack Morrison in front of her. She could still see traces of the face she’d memorized all those years ago, but he was right; the Old Jack was gone. The Jack she’d come to know as an adult, Soldier 76, was much more of a person than an idol to her. If she were honest with herself, she still had trouble processing the cognitive dissonance from time to time. She stood up, walked back to the table they shared, and downed the rest of the whiskey that Jack had poured for her.

“You know, I used to have a crush on you,” she said. Adrenaline surged in her veins. It was a risk, but something in the back of her mind told her to go for it, to whatever end. She had long wanted to tell him, simply to get it off her chest. If they were clearing the air, this was as good a time as any.

Jack looked up at her slowly and then finally stood and joined her at the table. He ran a hand through his cropped white hair. He didn’t look surprised or uncomfortable, like he was going to have to find a way to laugh it off or let her down easy. That, she half expected. Instead, he looked interested. This was uncharted territory.

“Is that so?” he said. He looked at his glass but didn’t reach for it. Fareeha wondered if he would reproach her for being inappropriate. He didn’t. She stepped closer, inching into his space.

“It is,” she said. She was playful, but cautious, in case the warmth she thought she detected in his gruff voice turned out to be something else. Her arm brushed his, and the skin-to-skin contact took on a different meaning than it had during their sparring match.

“And now?” he asked, quietly. Jack gently wrapped an arm around her waist. She could feel the warmth and strength of his long fingers through her shirt, nearly eclipsing the small of her back. She hadn’t anticipated that. His eyes searched hers; there was a heat there that she had never seen before. It was real and present and right in front of her.

She brought a hand up to his chest, feeling the flex of muscle under her fingertips. Her other hand traveled up to his face, where she softly traced the scar that ran from his nose to his chin. His eyes closed and she could feel his hand tense at her back. She raised herself onto her toes and kissed the place where the scar crossed his bottom lip. He gasped slightly and drew her closer. She pressed her body into his.

Jack opened his eyes and looked at Fareeha. There was a sense of wonder in his expression that lit up his whole face. She wrapped a hand around his neck and pulled his face to hers, kissing him in earnest. He scooped her up and planted her on the table, stepping between her legs and wrapping them around his waist. She moaned softly into his mouth and he deepened the kiss, exploring her mouth with his tongue.

His large hands roamed across her back, her bottom, her breasts and through her hair. She took his shirt off and tossed it behind her, running her hands across the hard muscle of his chest and shoulders. She edged off the table and pushed him against the wall. He growled deep in his throat before picking her up and spinning, pinning her against the wall. He moved his mouth to the base of her neck, kissing and teasing her skin with his teeth. She could feel his erection through his pants as he ground his hips into hers. She reached a hand down to tease him and he moaned. She could feel his hot breath against the skin of her breasts.

“Fareeha,” he whispered.

There was a light step behind them, and the close of the refrigerator door.

Jack froze. Fareeha’s stomach launched itself into her throat. She peeked over Jack’s shoulder and saw a flash of pink hair. Zarya had one of her protein shakes in hand and a pained, embarrassed expression on her face. She put a finger to her lips, mouthed a “sorry” to Fareeha, and tiptoed as quickly and quietly as she could out of the kitchen.

Jack groaned and let Fareeha down to the ground, but his hands remained on her shoulders and he pressed his face into her hair.

“Don’t tell me who that was,” he said. She tried to stifle a giggle, but she found she couldn’t help it. She could feel him laughing with her, though he tried to suppress it as well.

“Come on,” she said, finally. “There probably isn’t anyone in the gym, and I could use a workout.”


End file.
